The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1887-08-06
USELESS INVESTIGATION.

The Pacific railways investigating
committee is unearthing evidence OF a
GOOD deal of sharp practice and crook
edness on the part of the builders and
early owners of the Central Pacific; the
committee is getting it on record that
certain men made themselves million
aires out of constructing and operating
the road. But so far not thing has
been brought out that has not been
known by everybody for years; nothing
has been dug up which the men being
investigated have tried to keep
buried; nothing has cone to the
surface which has not been talked
about, written about and publicly dis
cussed these fifteen years. Everybody
knows that few shrewd men so mani
pulated things as to start with nothing
except brains and cunning. and come
out with colossal fortunes. Everybody
knows that these men, seeing the folly
if not the utter imPossibility of attempt
ing to make the Central Pkciic pay the
money il owed the government, were
shrewd enough to get themselves into
a position where they could get from
under. All have known that Stanford,
Crocker, Huntington and associates
we're the clever men who loved them
selves quite as much as they did any
body else, and that they were careful to
look out for number one before they
permitted number two to trouble them.
These things which the commission is
getting into its record may be very
amusing 90 the gentlemen who are
making the inquiry, but what will they
all amount to after the matter has been
collected2 To simply nothing. The Cen
tral Pacific would be willing to-day
to surrender the subsidized road, from
Ogden to Sacramento, to government if
that would cancel the debt. II would
like to unload on those terms, for it
would be making money by the trans
action. 1t is believed the lire could be
duplicated for less money than the
company owes the United States
Treasury. Government can possibly
get no more than the road for its debt.
1t cannot take other roads belonging to
Stanford and associates to satisfy q
second mortgage on the Central
Pacific. 1t cannot take Stan
ford's money from the bank,
because it has a claim only on
the Central Pacific Railway. The gov
eminent doesn't want the railroad, for
tits not in the railway business, and if
it were to put the property up at auc
ton, it would get bid of perhaps half
the amount of its claim.
1t looks to US that this Pacific roads
investigation is q piece of expensive
nonsense. 1t will cost the government
lot of money and will result in alb
solutely nothing beneficial. 1t may
furnish few congressman with md
terial for speeches, and give editors and
politicians chance to censure,
abuse and BLACKBOARD half q
dozen men whose wealth and
social and political position make
them conspicuous objects; but it will
not bring into the national treasury the
money that has gone from there into
the railroads.
There has been laundering on the
part of Congress ever since the golden
spike was driven On the Promontory
eighteen years ago, and this investiga-
ton is in perfect harmony with the long
series of blunders which have been per-
petrdted. Everything done hampers
the roads and further delays the settle
ment of the debt due government.